We all love ourselves. That seems to be such
an instinctively true statement that we do not bother to examine it more
thoroughly. In our daily affairs  in love, in business, in other areas of life
 we act on this premise. Yet, upon closer inspection, it looks shakier.

Some people explicitly state that they do not
love themselves at all (they are ego-dystonic). Others confine their lack of
self-love to certain of their traits, to their personal history, or to some of
their behaviour patterns. Yet others feel content with who they are and with
what they are doing (ego-syntonic).

But one group of people seems distinct in its
mental constitution  narcissists.

According to the legend of Narcissus, this
Greek boy fell in love with his own reflection in a pond. In a way, this amply
sums up the nature of his namesakes: narcissists. The mythological Narcissus
rejected the advances of the nymph Echo and was punished by Nemesis. Consigned
to pine away as he fell in love with his own reflection  exactly as Echo had
pined away for him. How apt. Narcissists are punished by echoes and reflections
of their problematic personalities up to this very day.

Narcissists are said to be in love with
themselves.

But this is a fallacy. Narcissus is not in
love with himself. He is in love with his reflection.

There is a major difference between one's
True Self and reflected-self.

Loving your True Self is healthy, adaptive,
and functional.

Loving a reflection has two major drawbacks:

One depends on the
existence and availability of the reflection to produce the emotion of
self-love.

The absence of a
"compass", an "objective and realistic yardstick", by
which to judge the authenticity of the reflection. In other words, it is
impossible to tell whether the reflection is true to reality  and, if so,
to what extent.

The popular misconception is that narcissists
love themselves. In reality, they direct their love to other people's
impressions of them. He who loves only impressions is incapable of loving
people, himself included.

But the narcissist does possess the in-bred
desire to love and to be loved. If he cannot love himself  he must love his
reflection. But to love his reflection  it must be loveable. Thus, driven by
the insatiable urge to love (which we all possess), the narcissist is
preoccupied with projecting a loveable image, albeit compatible with his
self-image (the way he "sees" himself).

The narcissist maintains this projected image
and invests resources and energy in it, sometimes depleting him to the point of
rendering him vulnerable to external threats.

But the most important characteristic of the
narcissist's projected image is its lovability.

(continued below)

This article appears in my book "Malignant Self-love: Narcissism
Revisited"

To a narcissist, love is interchangeable with
other emotions, such as awe, respect, admiration, attention, or even being
feared (collectively known as Narcissistic
Supply). Thus, to him, a projected image, which provokes these reactions in
others, is both "loveable and loved". It also feels like self-love.

The more successful this projected image (or
series of successive images) is in generating Narcissistic Supply (NS)  the
more the narcissist becomes divorced from his True Self and married to the
image.

I am not saying that the narcissist does not
have a central nucleus of a "self". All I am saying is that he
prefers his image  with which he identifies unreservedly  to his True Self.
The True Self becomes serf to the Image. The narcissist, therefore, is not
selfish  because his True Self is paralysed and subordinate.

The narcissist is not attuned exclusively to
his needs. On the contrary: he ignores them because many of them conflict with
his ostensible omnipotence and omniscience. He does not put himself first  he
puts his self last. He caters to the needs and wishes of everyone around him 
because he craves their love and admiration. It is through their reactions that
he acquires a sense of distinct self. In many ways he annuls himself  only to
re-invent himself through the look of others. He is the person most insensitive
to his true needs.

The narcissist drains himself of mental
energy in this process. This is why he has none left to dedicate to others.
This fact, as well as his inability to love human beings in their many
dimensions and facets, ultimately transform him into a recluse. His soul is
fortified and in the solace of this fortification he guards its territory
jealously and fiercely. He protects what he perceives to constitute his independence.

Why should people indulge the narcissist? And
what is the "evolutionary", survival value of preferring one kind of
love (directed at an image) to another (directed at one's self)?

These questions torment the narcissist. His
convoluted mind comes up with the most elaborate contraptions in lieu of
answers.

Why should people indulge the narcissist,
divert time and energy, give him attention, love and adulation? The
narcissist's answer is simple: because he is entitled to it. He feels
that he deserves whatever he succeeds to extract from others and much more.
Actually, he feels betrayed, discriminated against and underprivileged because
he believes that he is not being treated fairly, that he should get more than
he does.

There is a discrepancy between his infinite
certainty that his is a special status which renders him worthy of recurrent
praise and adoration, replete with special benefits and prerogatives  and the
actual state of his affairs. To the narcissist, this status of uniqueness is
bestowed upon him not by virtue of his achievements, but merely because he
exists.

The narcissist's deems his mere existence as
sufficiently unique to warrant the kind of treatment that he expects to get
from the world. Herein lies a paradox, which haunts the narcissist: he derives
his sense of uniqueness from the very fact that he exists and he derives his
sense of existence from his belief that he is unique.

Clinical data show that there is rarely any
realistic basis for these grandiose
notions of greatness and uniqueness.

Some narcissists are high achievers with
proven track records. Some of them are pillars of their communities. Mostly,
they are dynamic and successful. Still, they are ridiculously pompous and
inflated personalities, bordering on the farcical and provoking resentment.

The narcissist is forced to use other people
in order to feel that he exists. It is trough their eyes and through their
behaviour that he obtains proof of his uniqueness and grandeur. He is a
habitual "people-junkie". With time, he comes to regard those around
him as mere instruments of gratification, as two-dimensional cartoon figures
with negligible lines in the script of his magnificent life.

He becomes unscrupulous, never bothered by
the constant exploitation of
his milieu, indifferent to the consequences of his actions, the damage and the
pain that he inflicts on others and even the social condemnation and sanctions
that he often has to endure.

When a person persists in a dysfunctional,
maladaptive or plain useless behaviour despite grave repercussions to himself
and to others, we say that his acts are compulsive. The narcissist is
compulsive in his pursuit of Narcissistic Supply. This linkage between
narcissism and obsessive-compulsive disorders sheds light on the mechanisms of
the narcissistic psyche.

The narcissist does not suffer from a faulty
sense of causation. He is not oblivious to the likely outcomes of his actions
and to the price he may have to pay. But he doesn't care.

A personality whose very existence is a
derivative of its reflection in other people's minds is perilously dependent on
these people's perceptions. They are the Source of Narcissistic Supply (NSS). Criticism and disapproval are
interpreted as a sadistic withholding of said supply and as a direct threat to
the narcissist's mental house of cards.

The narcissist lives in a world of all or
nothing, of a constant "to be or not be". Every discussion that he
holds, every glance of
every passer-by reaffirms his existence or casts it in doubt. This is why the
reactions of the narcissist seem so disproportionate: he reacts to what he
perceives to be a danger to the very cohesion of his self. Thus, every minor
disagreement with a Source of Narcissistic Supply  another person  is
interpreted as a threat to the narcissist's very self-worth.

This is such a crucial matter, that the
narcissist cannot take chances. He would rather be mistaken then remain without
Narcissistic Supply. He would rather discern disapproval and unjustified
criticism where there are none then face the consequences of being caught
off-guard.

The narcissist has to condition his human
environment to refrain from expressing criticism and disapproval of him or of
his actions and decisions. He has to teach people around him that these provoke
him into frightful fits of temper and rage attacks and turn him into a
constantly cantankerous and irascible person. His exaggerated reactions
constitute a punishment for their inconsiderateness and their ignorance of his
true psychological state.

The narcissist blames others for his behaviour,
accuses them of provoking him into his temper tantrums and believes firmly that
"they" should be punished for their "misbehaviour".
Apologies  unless accompanied by verbal or other humiliation  are not enough.
The fuel of the narcissist's rage is spent mainly on vitriolic verbal send-offs
directed at the (often imaginary) perpetrator of the (oft innocuous) offence.

The narcissist  wittingly or not  utilises
people to buttress his self-image and to regulate his sense of self-worth. As
long and in as much as they are instrumental in achieving these goals, he holds
them in high regard, they are valuable to him. He sees them only through this
lens. This is a result of his inability to love others: he lacks empathy, he
thinks utility, and, thus, he reduces others to mere instruments.

If they cease to "function", if, no
matter how inadvertently, they cause him to doubt his illusory, half-baked,
self-esteem  they are subjected to a reign of terror. The narcissist then
proceeds to hurt these "insubordinates". He belittles and humiliates
them. He displays aggression and violence in myriad forms. His behaviour
metamorphoses, kaleidoscopically, from over-valuing (idealising) the useful
person  to a severe devaluation of same. The narcissist abhors, almost
physiologically, people judged by him to be "useless".

These rapid alterations between absolute
overvaluation (idealisation) to complete devaluation make long-term
interpersonal relationships with the narcissist all but impossible.

The more pathological form of narcissism 
the Narcissistic Personality
Disorder (NPD)  was defined in successive versions of the American DSM
(Diagnostic and Statistical Manual published by the American Psychiatric
Association) and the international ICD (Classification of Mental and
Behavioural Disorders, published by the World Health Organisation). It is
useful to scrutinise these geological layers of clinical observations and their
interpretation.

In 1977 the DSM-III criteria included:

An inflated valuation of
oneself (exaggeration of talents and achievements, demonstration of
presumptuous self-confidence);

Defective social conscience
(rebels against the conventions of common social existence, does not value
personal integrity and the rights of other people).

Compare the 1977 version with the one adopted
10 years later (in the DSM-III-R) and expanded upon in 1994 (in the DSM-IV) and
in 2000 (the DSM-IV-TR)  click here to
read the latest diagnostic criteria.

The narcissist is portrayed as a monster, a
ruthless and exploitative person. Yet, inside, the narcissist suffers from a
chronic lack of confidence and is fundamentally dissatisfied. This applies to
all narcissists. The distinction between "compensatory" and
"classic" narcissists is spurious. All narcissists are walking scar tissue,
the outcomes of various forms of abuse.

On the outside, the narcissist may appear to
be labile and unstable. But,
this does not capture the barren landscape of misery and fears that is his
soul. His brazen and reckless
behaviour covers up for a depressive,
anxious interior.

How can such contrasts coexist?

Freud (1915) offered a trilateral model of
the human psyche, composed of the Id, the Ego, and the Superego.

According to Freud, narcissists are dominated
by their Ego to such an extent that the Id and Superego are neutralised. Early
in his career, Freud believed narcissism to be a normal developmental phase
between autoeroticism and object-love. Later on, he concluded that linear
development can be thwarted by the very efforts we all make in our infancy to
evolve the capacity to love an object (another person).

Some of us, thus Freud, fail to grow beyond
the phase of self-love in the development of our libido. Others refer to
themselves and prefer themselves as objects of love. This choice  to
concentrate on the self  is the result of an unconscious decision to give up a
consistently frustrating and unrewarding effort to love others and to trust
them.

The frustrated and abused child learns that
the only "object" he can trust and that is always and reliably
available, the only person he can love without being abandoned or hurt  is
himself.

So, is pathological narcissism the outcome of
verbal, sexual, physical, or psychological abuse (the overwhelming view)  or,
on the contrary, the sad result of spoiling the child and idolising it (Millon,
the late Freud)?

This debate is easier to resolve if one
agrees to adopt a more comprehensive definition of "abuse".
Overweening, smothering, spoiling, overvaluing, and idolising the child  are
also forms of parental abuse.

This is because, as Horney pointed out, the smothered
and spoiled child is dehumanised and instrumentalised. His parents love him not
for what he really is  but for what they wish and imagine him to be: the
fulfilment of their dreams and frustrated wishes. The child becomes the vessel
of his parents' discontented lives, a tool, the magic airbrush with which they
seek to transform their failures into successes, their humiliation into
victory, their frustrations into happiness.

The child is taught to give up on reality and
adopt the parental fantasies. Such an unfortunate child feels omnipotent and
omniscient, perfect and brilliant, worthy of adoration and entitled to special
treatment. The faculties that are honed by constantly brushing against bruising
reality  empathy, compassion, a realistic assessment of one's abilities and
limitations, realistic expectations of oneself and of others, personal
boundaries, team work, social skills, perseverance and goal-orientation, not to
mention the ability to postpone gratification and to work hard to achieve it 
are all lacking or missing altogether.

This kind of child turned adult sees no
reason to invest resources in his skills and education, convinced that his
inherent genius should suffice. He feels entitled for merely being, rather than
for actually doing (rather as the nobility in days gone by felt entitled not by
virtue of its merits but as the inevitable, foreordained outcome of its birth
right). The narcissist is not meritocratic  but aristocratic.

Such a mental structure is brittle,
susceptible to criticism and disagreement, vulnerable to the incessant
encounter with a harsh and intolerant world. Deep inside, narcissists of both
kinds (those wrought by "classic" abuse and those yielded by being
idolised)  feel inadequate, phoney, fake, inferior, and deserving of
punishment.

This is Millon's mistake. He makes a
distinction between several types of narcissists. He wrongly assumes that the
"classic" narcissist is the outcome of parental overvaluation,
idolisation, and spoiling and, thus, is possessed of supreme, unchallenged,
self-confidence, and is devoid of all self-doubt.

According to Millon, it is the
"compensatory" narcissist that falls prey to nagging self-doubts,
feelings of inferiority, and a masochistic desire for self-punishment.

Yet, this distinction is both wrong and
unnecessary. Psychodynamically, there is only one type of pathological
narcissism  though there are two developmental paths to it. And all
narcissists are besieged by deeply ingrained (though at times not conscious)
feelings of inadequacy, fears of failure, masochistic desires to be penalised,
a fluctuating sense of self-worth (regulated by NS), and an overwhelming
sensation of fakeness.

In the early childhoods of all narcissists,
meaningful others are inconsistent in their acceptance. They pay attention to
the narcissist only when they wish to satisfy their needs. They tend to ignore
him  or actively abuse him  when these needs are no longer pressing or
existent.

The narcissist's past of abuse teaches him to
avoid deeper relationships in order to escape this painful approach-avoidance
pendulum. Protecting himself from hurt and from abandonment, he insulates
himself from people around him. He digs in  rather than spring out.

As children go through this phase of
disbelief. We all put people around us (the aforementioned objects) to
recurrent tests. This is the "primary narcissistic stage". A positive
relationship with one's parents or caregivers (Primary Objects) secures the
smooth transition to "object love". The child forgoes his narcissism.

Giving up one's narcissism is tough.
Narcissism is alluring, soothing, warm and dependable. It is always present and
omnipresent. It is custom tailored to the needs of the individual. To love
oneself is to have the perfect lover. Good reasons and strong forces 
collectively known as "parental love"  are required to motivate the
child to give its narcissism up.

The child progresses beyond its primary
narcissism in order to be able to love his parents. If they are narcissists,
they subject him to idealisation (over-valuation) and devaluation cycles. They
do not reliably satisfy the child's needs. In other words, they frustrate him.
He gradually realises that he is no more than a toy, an instrument, a means to
an end  his parents' gratification.

This shocking revelation deforms the budding
Ego. The child forms a strong dependence (as opposed to attachment) on his
parents. This dependence is really the outcome of fear, the mirror image of
aggression. In Freud-speak (psychoanalysis) we say that the child is likely to
develop accentuated oral fixations and regressions. In plain terms, we are
likely to see a lost, phobic, helpless, raging child.

But a child is still a child and his
relationship with his parents is of ultimate importance to him.

He, therefore, resists his natural reactions
to his abusive caregivers, and tries to defuse his libidinal and aggressive
sensations and emotions. This way, he hopes to rehabilitate the damaged
relationship with his parents (which never really existed). Hence the primordial confabulation,
the mother of all future narcissistic fantasies. In his embattled
mind, the child transforms the Superego into an idealised, sadistic
parent-child. His Ego, in turn, becomes a hated, devalued child-parent.

(continued below)

This article appears in my book "Malignant Self-love: Narcissism
Revisited"

The family is the mainspring of support of
every kind. It mobilises psychological resources and alleviates emotional
burdens. It allows for the sharing of tasks, provides material supplies coupled
with cognitive training. It is the prime socialisation agent and encourages the
absorption of information, most of it useful and adaptive.

This division of labour between parents and
children is vital both to personal growth and to proper adaptation. The child
must feel, as he does in a functional family, that he can share his experiences
without being defensive and that the feedback that he is getting is open and
unbiased. The only "bias" acceptable (often because it is consonant
with feedback from the outside) is the family's set of beliefs, values and
goals that are finally internalised by the child by way of imitation and
unconscious identification.

So, the family is the first and the most
important source of identity and emotional support. It is a greenhouse, where
the child feels loved, cared for, accepted, and secure  the prerequisites for
the development of personal resources. On the material level, the family should
provide the basic necessities (and, preferably, beyond), physical care and
protection, and refuge and shelter during crises.

The role of the mother (the Primary Object)
has been often discussed. The father's part is mostly neglected, even in
professional literature. However, recent research demonstrates his importance
to the orderly and healthy development of the child.

The father participates in the day-to-day
care, is an intellectual catalyst, who encourages the child to develop his
interests and to satisfy his curiosity through the manipulation of various
instruments and games. He is a source of authority and discipline, a boundary
setter, enforcing and encouraging positive behaviours and eliminating negative
ones.

The father also provides emotional support
and economic security, thus stabilising the family unit. Finally, he is the
prime source of masculine orientation and identification to the male child 
and gives warmth and love as a male to his daughter, without exceeding the
socially permissible limits.

We can safely say that the narcissist's
family is as severely disordered as he is. Pathological narcissism is largely a
reflection of this dysfunction. Such an environment breeds self-deception. The
narcissist's internal dialogue is "I do have a relationship with my
parents. It is my fault  the fault of my emotions, sensations, aggressions and
passions  that this relationship is not working. It is, therefore, my
responsibility to make amends. I will construct a narrative in which I am both
loved and punished. In this script, I will allocate roles to myself and to my
parents. This way, everything will be fine and we will all be happy."

Thus starts the cycle of over-valuation
(idealisation) and devaluation. The dual roles of sadist and punished masochist
(Superego and Ego), parent and child, permeate all the narcissist's
interactions with other people.

The narcissist experiences a reversal of roles
as his relationships progress. At the beginning of a relationship he is the
child in need of attention, approval and admiration. He becomes dependent.
Then, at the first sign of disapproval (real or imaginary), he is transformed
into an avowed sadist, punishing and inflicting pain.

It is commonly agreed that a loss (real or
perceived) at a critical junction in the psychological development of the child
forces him to refer to himself for nurturing and for gratification. The child
ceases to trust others and his ability to develop object love, or to idealise
is hampered. He is constantly haunted by the feeling that only he can satisfy
his emotional needs.

He exploits people, sometimes
unintentionally, but always ruthlessly and mercilessly. He uses them to obtain
confirmation of the accuracy of his grandiose self-portrait.

The narcissist is usually above treatment. He
knows best. He feels superior
to his therapist in particular and to the science of psychology in general.
He seeks treatment only following a major life crisis, which directly threatens
his projected and perceived image. Even then he only wishes to restore the
previous balance.

Therapy
sessions with the narcissist resemble a battlefield. He is aloof and distanced,
demonstrates his superiority in a myriad ways, resents what he perceives to be
an intrusion on his innermost sanctum. He is offended by any hint regarding
defects or dysfunctions in his personality or in his behaviour. A narcissist is
a narcissist is a narcissist  even when he asks for help with his world and
worldview shattered.

Appendix: Object Relations Theories and
Narcissism

Otto Kernberg (1975, 1984, 1987) disagrees with
Freud. He regards the division between an "object libido" (energy
directed at objects, meaningful others, people in the immediate vicinity of the
infant) and a "narcissistic libido" (energy directed at the self as
the most immediate and satisfying object), which precedes it  as spurious.

Whether a child develops normal or
pathological narcissism depends on the relations between the representations of
the self (roughly, the image of the self that the child forms in his mind) and
the representations of objects (roughly, the images of other people that the
child forms in his mind, based on all the emotional and objective information
available to him). It is also dependent on the relationship between the
representations of the self and real, external, "objective" objects.

Add to these instinctual conflicts related to
both the libido and to aggression (these very strong emotions give rise to
strong conflicts in the child) and a comprehensive explanation concerning the
formation of pathological narcissism emerges.

Kernberg's concept of Self is closely related
to Freud's concept of Ego. The self is dependent upon the unconscious, which
exerts a constant influence on all mental functions. Pathological narcissism,
therefore, reflects a libidinal investment in a pathologically structured self
and not in a normal, integrative structure of the self.

The narcissist suffers because his self is
devalued or fixated on aggression. All object relations of such a self are
distorted: it detaches from real objects (because they hurt him often),
dissociates, represses, or projects. Narcissism is not merely a fixation on an
early developmental stage. It is not confined to the failure to develop
intra-psychic structures. It is an active, libidinal investment in a deformed
structure of the self.

Franz Kohut regarded narcissism as the final
product of the failing efforts of parents to cope with the needs of the child
to idealise and to be grandiose (for instance, to be omnipotent).

Idealisation is an important developmental
path leading to narcissism. The child merges the idealised aspects of the
images of his parents (Imagos, in Kohut's terminology) with those wide segments
of the image of the parent which are cathected (infused) with object libido (in
which the child invests the energy that he reserves for objects).

This exerts an enormous and all-important
influence on the processes of re-internalisation (the processes in which the
child re-introduces the objects and their images into his mind) in each of the
successive phases. Through these processes, two permanent nuclei of the
personality are constructed:

The basic, neutralising
texture of the psyche, and

The ideal Superego

Both of them are characterised by an invested
instinctual narcissistic cathexis (invested energy of self-love which is
instinctual).

At first, the child idealises his parents. As
he grows, he begins to notice their shortcomings and vices. He withdraws part
of the idealising libido from the images of the parents, which is conducive to
the natural development of the Superego. The narcissistic part of the child's
psyche remains vulnerable throughout its development. This is largely true
until the "child" re-internalises the ideal parent image.

Also, the very construction of the mental
apparatus can be tampered with by traumatic deficiencies and by object losses
right through the Oedipal period (and even in latency and in adolescence).

The same effect can be attributed to
traumatic disappointment by objects.

Disturbances leading to the formation of NPD
can be thus grouped into:

Very early
disturbances in the relationship with an ideal object. These lead to a structural weakness of the
personality, which develops a deficient and/or dysfunctional
stimuli-filtering mechanism. The ability of the individual to maintain a
basic narcissistic homeostasis of the personality is damaged. Such a
person suffers from diffusive narcissistic vulnerability.

A disturbance
occurring later in life  but still pre-Oedipally  affects the pre-Oedipal formation of the basic
mechanisms for controlling, channelling, and neutralising drives and
urges. The nature of the disturbance has to be a traumatic encounter with
the ideal object (such as a major disappointment). The symptomatic
manifestation of this structural defect is the propensity to re-sexualise
drive derivatives and internal and external conflicts, either in the form
of fantasies or in the form of deviant acts.

A disturbance formed
in the Oedipal or even in the early latent phases  inhibits the completion of the Superego
idealisation. This is especially true of a disappointment related to an
ideal object of the late pre-Oedipal and the Oedipal stages, where the
partly idealised external parallel of the newly internalised object is traumatically
destroyed.

Such a person possesses a set of values and
standards, but he is always on the lookout for ideal external figures from whom
he aspires to derive the affirmation and the leadership that he cannot get from
his insufficiently idealised Superego.

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